No poet will ever take the written word as a substitute for the spoken word; he knows that it is on the spoken word, and the spoken word only, that his art is founded.

Poetry is the work of poets, not of peoples or communities; artistic creation can never be anything but the production of an individual mind.

The Border Ballads, for instance, and the Robin Hood Ballads, clearly suppose a state of society which is nothing but a very circumscribed and not very important heroic age.

If epic poetry is a definite species, the sagas do not fall within it.

For the stage displays the first vigorous expression, as the natural thing and without conspicuous restraint, of private individuality.

The balance of private good and general welfare is at the bottom of civilized morals but the morals of the Heroic Age are founded on individuality, and on nothing else.

It is more difficult to keep the attention of hearers than of readers.